Speckled Mousebird

About the speckled mousebird

The speckled mousebird is the largest of the mousebird family and one of its most common members. It was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin, who placed it in the genus Colius and coined the name Colius striatus in his revised edition of Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. Gmelin based the description on an earlier account published in 1778 by the French naturalist Comte de Buffon, drawn from a specimen collected near the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa.

Seventeen subspecies are recognized, spread across most of the bird's range and differing mainly in head contrast, throat color, the amount of barring, and iris color. They span from C. s. nigricollis in Ghana and Nigeria east to the southwestern Central African Republic and south to western Angola and southwestern DR Congo, to C. s. leucotis in eastern Sudan, Eritrea and Ethiopia, to C. s. striatus — the nominate subspecies Gmelin first described — confined to southern South Africa. Other subspecies occupy stretches of Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Eswatini, reflecting how widely the species has spread across the African continent.

In appearance, the bird is dull mousy brown across the back and head, topped with a prominent crest. Its bill is black on the upper part and pinkish on the lower part. It can be confused with the rarer white-headed mousebird, but the two are told apart by differences in mandible color and by the speckled mousebird's lack of a bare grey orbital patch around the eye. It isn't known for its song, but it is a noisy bird nonetheless — in flight it gives a warbling tsu-tsu call, along with a distinctive tisk-tisk alarm call.

Behavior and diet

Speckled mousebirds are conspicuously social. They feed together, engage in mutual preening, and go to the ground together to dust-bathe, occasionally swallowing small pebbles that help grind up vegetation during digestion. At nightfall they roost in tight groups of around 20 birds, and on cold nights they can become torpid — a state that would seem to leave them vulnerable, but the size of the group appears to be enough to deter most nocturnal predators.

As a frugivore, the speckled mousebird feeds on fruits, berries, leaves, seeds and nectar, and it tends to be fairly particular about which foods it takes, with its choices shifting from area to area. Breeding can happen at any time of year rather than in a fixed season. Both male and female take part in building the nest, a large, untidy cup made of plant and animal material that sometimes incorporates scraps of cloth or paper. Clutch size ranges from one to seven eggs, apparently based on latitude, though it usually averages three to four. Nestlings are fed not just by their parents but by helpers, typically juveniles from earlier broods that stick around to assist. Incubation takes fourteen days, chicks first leave the nest at around seventeen or eighteen days old, and within a little over a month they begin foraging entirely on their own.

Range and habitat

The speckled mousebird's range stretches from Cameroon in the west, east to Eritrea and Ethiopia, and south through eastern Africa to southern South Africa, with the species overspread across the whole of Tanzania. It occupies most habitat types available in that range with two notable exceptions — rainforest and the more arid regions, both of which it avoids. Instead, it favors open bushveld, savanna and open woodland, along with areas of tangled thicket, and it does well enough around people to be considered a common backyard bird in gardens and orchards.

Conservation status

The speckled mousebird is rated Least Concern on the IUCN Red List, in a 2016 assessment by BirdLife International, and no specific threats to the species are documented.

The bird has a broad footprint, covering most of eastern, central and southern Africa. It tolerates a wide range of habitat types, from open bushveld to tangled thicket, and does well enough around people to be considered a common backyard visitor in gardens and orchards rather than a bird confined to untouched wilderness. Seventeen recognized subspecies are found across that range, from West African populations in Ghana and Nigeria to a southern population confined to southern South Africa.